


Forever and Ever and Ever

by saltwaterselkie



Series: Ineffable Husbands [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/M, Female Crowley (Good Omens), Gardener Aziraphale (Good Omens), Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Nanny Crowley (Good Omens), POV Crowley (Good Omens), Pining, anyway, briefly, crowley's got him some secrets, crowley's such a lovable idiot, fake antichrist, he needs to admit more things to himself, raising a kid, secret gardener crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 07:49:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20305984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltwaterselkie/pseuds/saltwaterselkie
Summary: Crowley was going to be the gardener, but as things turned out... it's better this way.





	Forever and Ever and Ever

Crowley didn’t like kids.

It was in a demon’s job description, right after the part about luring all souls to Hell and spitting in the face of the God who forced them to fall. Kids were humans, and humans were for damning. Not for worrying about or cooing over or heav- hell forbid, _caring_ for.

So what if Crowley hadn’t been able to keep his horror from settling in when he’d thought of all those children drowning in the floods while Noah sat high and dry in his little boat? So what if he happened to leave a loaf of bread or two near where the street urchins of London used to gather in the early 19th century? He was just ensuring they wouldn’t die as innocents. Ensuring that they’d live long enough to accumulate a patina of sin. Good demonic work, that.

He didn’t like kids, and here he was, about to raise one. Raise one with his _angel_, for crying out loud. Perhaps, Crowley thought, he could excuse himself for liking _one_ child, if it came to that. Warlock wasn’t really a _human_ child at all, come to think of it. He was an Antichrist. Crowley didn’t (couldn’t) like children, but he was allowed to like the _Antichrist_ (the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness), wasn’t he?

Aziraphale, as in all things, did not hold back. The day before they were to arrive at the Dowling residence, Crowley’s phone rang.

“Why, my dear, you _must_ come over at _once_,” Aziraphale blurted out, only moments after Crowley picked up the receiver. He sounded just as excited as he had when he’d found a second edition of Shelley’s _Frankenstein_ in a London flea market. Crowley found himself smiling – completely involuntarily, of course – and slammed his emotions down to the pit of his stomach, where they belonged.

“On my way, angel.” It wasn’t really a question as to whether or not he would go. Aziraphale asked; Crowley complied. It was the way of the world, whether his angel realized it or not.

Crowley _thought_ he was ready for anything when he showed up at the bookshop. He was not ready for a complete stranger to throw open the door and pose with arms wide, lumps of cloth hanging off his shoulders and jagged teeth poking out of his mouth.

“_Bloody…_ angel, you’ve gone centuries with the same hairstyle, and _this_ is how you choose to change it up?” Crowley gestured, rather impotently, at the frumpy, weatherbeaten hat Aziraphale had settled on his head.

Aziraphale frowned. “I rather like it,” he said. “And I thought you might, too.” There was a drop in his voice, a drop that warned Crowley to stop pushing and start being uplifting. As much as anything a demon said could uplift an angel.

“It’s just… I thought _I_ was going to be the gardener.”

“Well, yes,” Aziraphale acknowledged, settling like he was a swan tucking in its wings. “But I was rather chuffed when I saw these teeth in a jester’s shop and I thought, _well, now, that’s perfect for a gardener, isn’t it?_ You must admit they look quite real!”

Crowley gave him a half-smile and nodded uncertainly. “Why, yes, they do indeed. Marvelous human thing, disguises. You do it very well.”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened. “Just _wait_ until you hear my voice, Crowley my dear. I’ve been practicing this accent…”

“I’m the governess,” Crowley said. It hadn’t dawned on him until that moment. He was the _governess_. If Aziraphale was the gardener, he was the _nanny_.

He could pull out the old black dress again. Still fit rather well; and the hairstyles that had come into fashion since he’d last presented as a woman were much to his liking. And he’d get to spend good, quality time with the kid – before bed, getting ready in the morning…

Oh. He was getting too excited, too ready to embrace child-raising like second nature when really it was _against_ his nature. Or should’ve been. He would be very demon-y when he did it, very demon-y indeed. Sing lullabies about killing things or something. He was creative. He’d figure it out.

And then they met the boy.

It wasn’t Crowley’s fault, this time. It was her _heart’s_ fault, because even though demons weren’t supposed to have those, this body did and would until it was discorporated. Crowley stood there in her classy dress, hair carefully coiffed, glasses perched on her nose, and looked down at a little boy who reminded her all too much of herself in the early days of the world. A little boy who needed love.

“Hello, Warlock,” Crowley said, smiling her cheerful smile at the kid.

“Are you going to be here forever and ever and ever?” The child had wide eyes and a gap between his front teeth that braces hadn’t yet fixed.

“Of course,” Crowley said, grinning wide.

And that was how it began.

<><><> 

Three years later, Warlock accused Crowley of being in love.

“What in Satan’s name are you talking about, dear?” Crowley asked, shooting Warlock a warning look. She wasn’t sure what the kid was about to say – it was a rough patch for the young ones at this age, and the half the time Warlock wasn’t sassing he was pulling out the newest tool in his kit: sarcasm. But now, he sounded like he was serious. As dead serious as he was when he asked about when his father would be getting back from a business trip stacked on a business trip.

“Brother Francis,” Warlock said matter-of-factly.

She should have denied it, but her first instinct was rather different. “Don’t tell him,” she said, almost pleading. Why was she _pleading?_ She was a bloody demon. “Don’t tell him,” she repeated, adjusting her tone.

“Why not?”

Crowley considered. They were sitting on the back porch together, Warlock on a bench with his legs dangling off the edge of it and Crowley with her back straight against her chair. Aziraphale was out good-naturedly stabbing a begonia to death. As she had for the last three years, Crowley would go back to the garden after dark, when Aziraphale was back at his bookshop and tucked in a cozy nook with _Paradise Lost_ in his hands, and scream at the begonia until it pulled itself back into the land of the living.

Crowley would almost call it a miracle. As it was, two things seemed to keep the plants under Aziraphale’s black thumb alive: Crowley’s sheer determination and her overwhelming fear of the crestfallen look on Aziraphale’s face if he found out he’d been slowly torturing every plant in the garden to an untimely demise.

“Don’t tell him,” Crowley said, “because I don’t want him to know. If he does, I… well. Don’t worry yourself with it, darling.”

“Tell me,” Warlock ordered, and was it just Crowley, or did she detect a note of hellish power in the child’s tone? _Antichrist_ power, perhaps?

Bloody hell. The damned Antichrist had figured her out, and Aziraphale was still over there wielding a trowel with wild abandon, entirely oblivious.

“If I tell him,” Crowley said, trying to make the words fit, “he might never talk to me again. He might think that I’ve been just pretending to like him as… as colleagues, when really…”

“You just want to get into his pants,” Warlock announced. “Daddy says that sometimes.”

“You’ve got a horrible father, darling, and no.” Crowley shook her head. “No, when really his bosses would ruin him if they knew. Mine would probably go after me, too.”

“You mean Daddy?”

“No.” Crowley’s mind wasn’t quite working right. If she wasn’t dreaming it, she thought Aziraphale might be accidently conjuring a halo at the moment. Perhaps it was just the sun in his hair. “No, the people at the… at the International Nanny and International Gardener Symposiums.”

“Ah,” Warlock nodded sagely. As if he knew what a symposium was. Sometimes Crowley wondered if the kid even knew his own name.

She patted him on the head. “So it’ll be our secret?”

“Our secret," Warlock agreed. "For how long?”

Crowley looked up at Aziraphale, and a hook tugged inside her chest. She noticed a smile climbing on her face and bit her lip, pulling her expression back to neutral.

“Forever. And ever, and ever.”


End file.
